ALWAYS respect the ocean

I had just spent a fantastic day on my TI sailing the sparkling clear waters of Geographe Bay, Western Australia and had packed up the TI apart from the main hull when I noticed my water bottle being blown out to sea on a howling off-shore wind. As I needed this bottle and hated the idea of more plastic floating out in the ocean I put on my life jacket, grabbed my paddle, jumped on the TI and went to retrieve the water bottle. BIG MISTAKE!! I soon discovered that my rudder was stuck and tried to unjam it with the hand controls, no good, then I tried to raise the rudder whilst on full lock, no go, I then attempted to paddle back but kept spinning around, all the time being blown out to sea, then I tried to stretch out to manually unjam the rudder until it felt like the hull might tip over. the prospect of being in the water clinging to an upturned hull did not appeal. All the time I was being blown out to sea, it was dusk and no one was on the beach. The prospect of being 20 kms out in the Indian Ocean at night was scarey. Luckily I tried peddling backwards on one side and the boat amazingly stopped spinning and slowly inched back to the shore, he rudder had become more of a brake than a rudder. From now on I'll only go out in the ocean with my Mobile (Cell) Phone and an anchor ready to throw out.

It's always amazed me how many stories I've heard about how fast an adventure becomes an ordeal and how fear and adrenaline become the primary motivator to stay in a survival mode.

I'm glad to read that you were able to find a way to get through the situation and that a inexpensive object like a water bottle didn't cause you to feed the fishes and become a permanent resident of Davey Jones' locker along with the other land lubbers.

Merry Christmas and welcome back to being able to sail another day !

_________________